10 Free, Awesome Alternatives to the Pebble Watch's Ugly Face Designs

Share

10 Free, Awesome Alternatives to the Pebble Watch's Ugly Face Designs

The attmm watch face follows a typical design pattern but pairs it with a unique aesthetic quality. Photo: Albert Salamon

For the less adventurous, Salamon has also designed a couple of more traditional watch faces. Photo: Albert Salamon

The ttmmup is one of Salamon's most elegant designs. Large squares mark the hour, while small ones represent five minute blocks of time. Photo: Albert Salamon

With the ttmmgrid, minutes are displayed as numbers in the center of the watch face, while hours are represented by fused squares. The watches in these images are displaying the times 11:42 a.m. and 1:02 a.m. Photo: Albert Salamon

Unconstrained by manufacturing, Salamon is experimenting heavily with watch face designs, including faces inspired by Microsoft Excel, of all things. Photo: Albert Salamon

In this design, the hour is displayed traditionally, but the minutes are represented abstractly. Small squares represent a minute, large squares 10 minute blocks, and the rectangles denote 30 minute time blocks. These watches read 10:01 am, 7:29 am, and 8:58 pm. Photo: Albert Salamon

Salamon's goal with this watch face is to remind wearers to focus on the big picture. This face only displays time in 15 minute and one hour blocks, but indicates five and 10 minute increments by blinking the squares at different rates. These watches read 4 a.m., 7:45 a.m., and 11 p.m. Photo: Albert Salamon

Don't have a Pebble? Salamon has developed an app that demonstrates his unique take on time tracking. Photo: Albert Salamon

The Pebble smart watch and its competitors have promised to unlock a wave of wrist-based innovation, but so far many of the most popular apps for this new platform are just recreations of classic designs or homages to pop culture properties. Designer Albert Salamon wants that to change and is bringing his modern, minimal sensibility to the market with a collection of 10 new watch faces, and he's challenging other designers to do the same. "New technology gives us a new space," he says "It is priceless, but at the same time it obliges us to do it right."

>'These devices give us new space for expression.'

Salamon's watch faces attempt to honor the opportunities presented by the Pebble and take advantage of the pixelated display to tell time in ways that wouldn't be possible with analog timepieces:

The Timinus watch face was his first experiment and has a distinct sci-fi feel. Numbers are replaced with dots or lines that are arranged similarly to the way they are on playing cards, but the appearance is of something from the Star Wars universe.

The 4ttmm watch face simplifies time into 15 minute and 12 hour buckets and is focused on reminding wearers which part of the day one is in rather than displaying a fleeting second. In both cases, the goal is to get wearers thinking about the passage of time in their lives. "These apps show us changes in the meaning of our culture and that we are here for a just second," says Salamon. "This is my observation about the meaning of time; we have only now."

The ttmmchart takes inspiration from an unlikely source, Microsoft Excel, and displays hours and minutes as bar charts.

While these new smart watches create a platform for creativity, they could also devalue the art of the watch designer by making their work as easily tradeable as MP3s. Salamon isn't worried. "All free spaces are filled with something," he says. "Which is for me the basis of time like silence is for music. So my designs will live as long as people are looking at them."

Watch face design has stayed within a fairly tight functional band since the first portable timepieces were invented in 15th century. Hands either traced a circle or a segmented display showed off clunky digital characters, but Salamon believes it is time for watch face designers to spring into action. Siri voice commands in an Apple watch and NFC chips that open smart locks would allow designers to humanize the Internet of Things. Medical applications that collect biometric data and remind people to take their medication could help many live longer and healthier lives. But when cell phones provide satellite accurate time, Salamon believes one of the most important functions of a watch is allowing the wearer's personality to shine through. "I think that these devices give us new space for new artistic forms of expression to decorate ourselves with," he says "Something like digital tattoos or jewelry."

It will take time for the smart watch market to develop, and tech limitations will provide some barriers, but these wrist-sized wonders are another movement towards the convergence of digital and physical goods. "Three years ago, I dreamed of designing and producing my own watch," says Salamon. "But then I realized that real things were becoming digital and I came to fulfill my dreams in an immaterial way."